Amy & Isabelle

AMY & ISABELLE

by Elizabeth Strout

 

Award: LA Times Winner 1999

 

Nominations: PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2000, Women's Prize Finalist 2000 

 

Date Read: May 12, 2022

 

Amy & Isabelle is about the complex relationship between a mother and daughter. Isabelle harbors a secret that has influenced her entire life, keeping her closed off and stuck in her life. Amy is navigating the chaotic world of adolescence and establishing an identity outside of her mother. But as a single mom and only daughter, the relationship between these two is fraught.

 

Isabelle had Amy when she was very young, scandalously getting pregnant by her father’s best friend. Her mother died shortly after Amy was born. Since that time, Isabelle has raised Amy on her own, never finishing college and working in a dead-end job where she isolates herself from her co-workers. Due to a succession of events, Isabelle becomes close friends with two of the women in her office, Dottie and Bev, and they are all able to make themselves vulnerable to each other and find compassion for their pasts and presents.

 

Amy is just realizing her own power over men and, unfortunately, is lured into a sexual relationship with her substitute math teacher, Mr. Robertson. While they never actually have intercourse, they are caught in his car in an incredibly compromising state of undress. For Amy, her attraction to Mr. Robertson is love; for Mr. Robertson, we slowly realize it was just sex. This is a lesson Amy has to learn for herself, after she hunts him down and he pretends not to know her. A crushing blow to her heart and the realities of life and love.

 

After one night where everything falls apart for Isabelle, Amy, Bev and Dottie, so much baggage is let go and in a single night, Isabelle tells Amy about her origins, which heals their relationship in so many ways. Just being honest and bare with her daughter, Isabelle makes herself more human, capable of mistakes, and accepting that Amy doesn’t really “belong” to her.

 

This is such a beautiful novel, full of awareness and awkwardness and the vulnerability we all have within us. Strout has obviously closely observed the human condition and is able to give voice to all the beauty and ugliness that entails.

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